Emptiness ater attempts?

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ryan1337

Hello everyone! I've been trying so frequently and with great earnestness to project. I usually get in the hypnogogic stage, and experiences sensations of lightness and can "see" and feel very intense things that can't really be explained with words. Usually, it all builds up to this point, then it kind of stops. I lose focus, and drive, and the entire experience seems to stop. Afterwards, I feel a great amount of depression and meaninglessness. I like my life and everything, but I'm DYING to see the other side of things. I want to leave this body so badly, and it seems like I don't even HAVE an astral body sometimes. I just need some advice, guidance, and maybe a little encouragement as well. Does anyone else feel empty or meaningless when they fail to project?
<3

ArmyOfOne1911

Hey Ryan.

Definitely don't feel depressed after attempting such things. Some people don't experience OBE's for years! I keep telling myself how lucky I am to discover such a thing so young. You should be proud of getting in those hypnogogic states too! Even if you don't leave your body, really take pride in the fact that you did a great job trying. Feel those weird feelings you feel and think about them and discover why your body felt like that. I hope that made sense. I was in the same position as you. I still kinda am! I have only had one OBE and it was short, but amazing. All I can say is you got to keep at it and believe in astral projection, and keep wanting to astral project, and practice being able to astral project, and you will man. It may take a while but don't give up! Also, stick around on these forums because I have learned ALOT here. There are some great folks on here who can answer your questions, and if you ever have any questions you wanna throw at me let me know! I am a beginner at this though. Just don't give up!

-Cody

Lionheart

 Practice and perseverance are extremely important. You are showing all the positive signs to success so far here. Just don't be so eager, you can't rush this, one day you will notice that you hit the hypnogog state and then bam, you are in the Astral. Allow the natural process take place here. Sometimes when I get to the hypnogog or new sensation state I will jumpstart the process by visualizing a stream, then I will add on to it, let's say there is a current or a rocky crag that the water is moving towards. Then I will look around to see if there is anything else here easily identifiable such as a meadow or trees. Pretty soon you are there!
Good Luck and Safe Travels!  :-)

light487

Yer.. as the others have said, it sounds like you are trying to force the process. With everything I have read and learned about OoBE's, it's something that you need to "allow" to happen. It seems like you may have also got a bit excited and/or begun to analyse what was happening. Both of these reactions can stop an OoBE attempt in its tracks.

Your goal is to OoBE.. that's the main goal.. but like so many other things you should set milestones to reach along the way and take meaning from these milestones. For example when learning music, you can't hope to play like Joe Satriani (or your favourite artist) from the first day or even the first year. You need to practise, day after day, week after week. Along the way to being "great" though there are many moments where you realise how far you have come from that first day you picked up the instrument for the first time. Take satisfaction from these moments, enjoy them and get as much out of them before moving on towards the next milestone.

Rudolph

Quote from: ryan1337 on October 17, 2011, 23:04:49
Hello everyone! I've been trying so frequently and with great earnestness to project. I usually get in the hypnogogic stage, and experiences sensations of lightness and can "see" and feel very intense things that can't really be explained with words. Usually, it all builds up to this point, then it kind of stops. I lose focus, and drive, and the entire experience seems to stop. Afterwards, I feel a great amount of depression and meaninglessness. I like my life and everything, but I'm DYING to see the other side of things. I want to leave this body so badly, and it seems like I don't even HAVE an astral body sometimes. I just need some advice, guidance, and maybe a little encouragement as well. Does anyone else feel empty or meaningless when they fail to project?
<3

Hi ryan1337, "empty or meaningless" may not be such a bad thing -- many people meditate for years trying to attain the one and understand the other.
:wink:

Life here on planet Earth is ultimately meaningless... but it is not without purpose (at least, as long as you make the effort to give it one).

There are a couple good sites out there with useful info on getting OBE. Please try obe4u.com and read the free ebook download there. For many the best time to project is after 6 hours of sleep or immediately upon awakening. You might try to place your focus on the weekends or on days/nights when you can try this approach. If you are feeling frustrated be sure to stop trying during the day or at bedtime. These are the toughest times for beginners.

Meditation is good. There are those here and elsewhere that say it is not necessary but that is missing the point. Done well, meditation can enhance the OBE experience in very recognizable ways.
Beware the fake "seeker" who finds Truth to be abusive.

ryan1337

Thanks for all the advice guys! I'll try and be more appreciative of the journey itself rather than focused only on my destination. Followup question for lionheart, I've always felt those visualizations of settings would just lead to something fake. How does focusing on a presumably not real place help you leave your body? Thanks again to all!
<3

Lionheart

 Hey Ryan1337, that's an easy answer. It helps because you are no longer focused on your physical body or this physical world.  I never try to project by leaving my body, I always project by Phasing my focus inwards. That's much easier to do.
I hope this helps you. Good Luck and Safe Travels  :-)

light487

Here's what I got from using the stream/river scene, including detailed account of what I did up to that point, in my experiments last night:

Started off normally with eyes closed, laying down in bed making sure I was warm but not too hot (I've had enough failed attempts because my feet, or other extremity, were cold to make a point of doing this now) I put on Xanth's 4Hz beat/100Hz frequency recording on my MP3 player and started my breathing exercises.

My breathing exercises are VERY simple these days: I breath in deeply but slowly through my nose, hold for a second or two and then as I breathe out, I make a point of feeling my whole body relaxing and releasing tension. It's like each out breath is performed simply by allowing the breath to flow out, by allowing my muscles to relax. Each time I exhale, using this method, I immediately feel a calming and relaxing feeling from my feet, through my legs all the way up to my head. I only need to do this about 4 or 5 times. There's no visualisation other than thinking of my feet and legs during this exercise. That's enough to get me settled usually.

As I lay there, my eye might get itchy, or my ear, or where ever.. it's better to scratch those itches than to try and ignore them because while they are there, a part of your focus will be on them.. they are distracting. Moving for a brief moment is less of a detriment than allowing the itch to go on for a long time. Anyway, so I sort out any itches or physical feelings of discomfort and if there were a lot of itches, like there was for me last night, I will do a couple more breaths after I have sorted them out.

So now I am laying there, looking at the back of my eyelids, completely calm, relaxed but obviously still not in a "body asleep" mode yet. I imagine/think about my hand in front of my face about one foot away and focus on that point. I don't actually use my physical hand, just that I find it easier to focus on an external point if I imagine a part of myself extending to that point to begin with.

Anyway, I lay there.. gazing into the "blackness" (as per my other posts in other threads, it's not really black.. but more like a cloud of energy) and just keep listing to the binaural beats, enjoying the increasing relaxation and affirming to myself that "I deep desire to experience an out of body experience" or something along those lines. Basically just a setting of my intention, to make it clear what I am doing all this for etc etc

After a few minutes I notice a shift in awareness, it's just a subtle movement in my perception, hard to explain but it's easily detected when it happens. It's like my body suddenly goes from being calm and relaxed to being ULTRA RELAXED. Now I have come to recognise this as my starting point, so I begin to visualise the stream scene.

It's important, for me at least, to not attempt to visualise the entire scene in one go. First I will start with just the river/stream; what is the colour of the water, is it a slow of fast running stream, is it deep, is it wide or narrow. Then I start to expand on the river, moving outwards; what is the bank of the river like.. is it rocky, pebbles, muddy, grass; is there rocks or rapids in the water, if I can see the bottom of the river then what is on the bottom of the river? Is it sand, is it rocky, are there fish in there etc Now I move further away to the shores of the river; is the grass short, tall, patchy.. are there trees, bushes, flowers. What about a bridge across the river...

Essentially the only thing you want to be concentrating on is the river itself but looking at it from an angle, from a reasonable distance so that you can see around it a little. Still standing or laying on the side of the river. As you gaze at the river, don't think those things above.. just notice what is in and around the river. Don't force there to be grass, don't actually think "Is it wide, is it narrow, is it deep, is it shallow".. don't analyse it intellectually.. just notice whether it is one thing or another. The scene should build by itself as you widen your awareness of the area. Again, keep your focus on the actual running water itself, allowing the rest of the scene to remain in your peripheral. You should be gazing beyond all those things and focusing on the river.

Ok so for me last night, as I got to the point where I started to notice trees I became aware of a lighted, patterned area to the lower-left of my "visual" perception. Again, it's important to just keep focusing on your focal point (in this case, the river). I've noticed that this other "thing" is there, I acknowledge it without thinking about it or focusing on it. The "thing" becomes a little clearer now and my awareness slowly but surely shifts away from the river. I'm not consciously doing this, I'm just allowing the new scene/thing to take over. Even during this transition, I make a point to keep my focus on the river and rather than the new scene fading away, it actually becomes more and more focused and real.

At some point, I can't really say when, the new scene became the main point of focus. Up until that point it was just a splish-splosh of light and dark; very much like looking up in a forest and looking at the canopy of branches and leaves. You can see the light from the sky but there are dark bits where teh leaves and branches are. When the scene became clearer, I noticed that I was looking through a bamboo forest. I was very close to one of the bamboo stalks and kind of peering around it.

Where the river scene was a vague, imaginary place. The bamboo forest was more real but still of a dream-like quality. It was at this point that I had this strange sensation of being passively aware but at the same time looking through this scene as if I was there. It wasn't OoBE or fully phased.. I knew that for sure but it was like I was pushing myself to the side as something was coming past. Like when you are walking in a crowded place, your focus is on your destination and there are people going every which way but you just weave yourself, automatically, through the crowd without focusing on any of them. It's VERY hard for me to explain this part of the experience, what I was feeling, in any great detail as it was something I've not really experienced before.

So after this scene was presenting itself to me, I remained in a passive state and then I noticed yet another scene forming to the lower-left of my "vision". This one was moving, like going through a corridor with no discernable ceiling. So not quite a tunnel but the same idea. It was moving quite quickly and seemed to be more of the same light and dark stuff but in a different set of colours than before. At this point things started to become confused and I'm not really sure what happened but the new scene started to fade and my awareness of the bamboo forest started to become less real also. I tried, maybe too hard, to recover and follow into the tunnel/corridor as I felt that it might be a way to get to a full phased state.

In the end though, I ended up back to my fully relaxed calm state and even though I tried to go back to the river scene I didn't get anything further than that. I sat in a awareness state or just listening to the binaural beats, gazing into the nothingness for a while longer and then I started to get an itchy nose and called it. All done and said, the experience lasted approximately 25 minutes based on the amount of time that had transpired on the MP3 player.

Sorry this is so long.. I just wanted to go through the whole process in as much detail as possible to possible help others trying to figure this out.



ryan1337

Wow man! Thanks for sharing the wonderful experience. I'll definitely try it out for myself :)
<3

Lionheart

#9
 Light487, that was a perfect definition of a successful Phasing Session. Excellent job and great description, very well detailed. I see a lot of people getting hung up more on the "signposts" then anything else with Phasing. Once you learn to just let go and passively observe anyone can be successful here. It's easy to say, but quite hard to do because you have to reprogram your senses. When we first sense something visual/imagery, our focus goes immediately towards it. I have been practicing using my peripheral vision more in my waking hours. It has made it much easier to Phase and I also will notice certain orbs and things that I usually didn't pay notice before. A great time to practice your peripheral vision is to just lay on the grass and look up at the clouds. Start to focus on a certain cloud, then expand your vision to all you can see.

light487

Well I certainly didn't get a full phase but yes, I would consider it to be successful though. It was the first time I've really been able to properly passively observe the other scene. There was an experience I had a few days back where I was having an odd sensory experience that I remained passive to but nothing like this with scenery etc. I can readily see how that through all this practise, things are slowly becoming easier and easier to do. I still have a ways to go yet, though I am open to being surprised.. hehe, however it is experiences like above that keep me aware that it is possible and that motivates me to try again and again.

faxman

That is very interesting Light487.

Thank you especially for having detailed each step of this phasing experience.

Szaxx

Hi,
Your next step would be to ignore your (physical)  body completely. Let the subconcious take over.
Still in the visualisation youve generated, move yourself into it.
Thats it, you are out.
Its this step of letting go of your physical, breathing etc that feels un-natural but is neccessary.
Enjoy.
There's far more where the eye can't see.
Close your eyes and open your mind.

Boom

Quote from: ryan1337 on October 17, 2011, 23:04:49
Hello everyone! I've been trying so frequently and with great earnestness to project. I usually get in the hypnogogic stage, and experiences sensations of lightness and can "see" and feel very intense things that can't really be explained with words. Usually, it all builds up to this point, then it kind of stops. I lose focus, and drive, and the entire experience seems to stop. Afterwards, I feel a great amount of depression and meaninglessness. I like my life and everything, but I'm DYING to see the other side of things. I want to leave this body so badly, and it seems like I don't even HAVE an astral body sometimes. I just need some advice, guidance, and maybe a little encouragement as well. Does anyone else feel empty or meaningless when they fail to project?
<3

You've had a lot of response to this already.. But out of interest... Why do you want to project?  I think it would be beneficial to ask this yourself this in detail in order to find out why you feel so dissapointed when you fail.

Its a normal feeling to feel a bit down when we fail to do something we wish to achieve.  But I'm a bit worried from your post that Astral Projection is something you want to do to escape your own life.  Its very fascinating reading about going to another world where you can fly and do all these wonderous things where the laws of physics don't apply. But this is all similar to getting hooked on MMORPGs in video games.   From what I have come to understand. Astral Projection is lifting the lid on your life and seeing it from the inside out. The astral worlds are just representations of this.  So if youre looking to project to escape from who you are and where you are then you might be dissapointed. As Astral Projection is about learning more about yourself.

Sorry if i'm off the track a bit there.

Either way. Try not to be discouraged but also try not to be stressed, as stress will hinder your abilities to project.

ryan1337

Boom,
    Thanks for your reply. Pretty much my whole life I've felt a longer for the other side and i've always felt like a veil could be lifted over what's in front of me and it would reveal a new world or something. THEN I found out about AP and I was blown away. I'm not very attached to my life. The prospect of dying doesn't really faze me. I don't hate living, I just feel like i've been around the block too many times. It's hard to explain. All I want to do in the astral is learn and help others leave their body. It's not really escapism. I'm mainly just excited about how much more fulfilling my life will be after experiencing something like this and being able to do so on a continual basis.